


now let the healing start

by hellstrider



Series: Scars 'verse [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Boys with feelings, Episode: s06e09 Battle of the Bastards, Feelings, Game of Thrones - Freeform, Hand Jobs, Jonmund, M/M, Porn with Feelings, i'm so emotional, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 06:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19167685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellstrider/pseuds/hellstrider
Summary: "if i asked you to keep me, would you?"





	now let the healing start

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'scars' by tove lo
> 
> EDIT;; my friend tally and i have a discord for jonmund content!!! join us to yell!!!
> 
> https://t.co/mVsyaZIYoj

The wine is the only heat in his blood once the adrenaline flees, leaving him feeling as if he’s about to shake apart. Jon holds the old silver goblet between his hands, thinks, _my father may have used this last,_ and a thick stone rises up in his throat. The Great Hall is empty, too big around him, a chapel where all the people he’s lost begin to drift in his periphery; Robb, his father, Ygritte, Rickon – little Rickon, who he’d failed. He’d been right there, so close, and Jon had failed him.

Another name on a growing list. Jon drinks deep from the cup, and his empty belly grumbles. He reaches for the pitcher on the high table where his family used to sit and pours another cupful of wine. It’s so strange to sit here now; he never thought he would ever get to, and now that he has, he finds he hates it just as much as being forced to sit at the very end of the vast hall, so far from his family but just within the direct line of Catelyn’s burning stare.

Jon looks out the nearby window, and sees Sansa out in the open-air corridor, watching the bustle of Winterfell below like their father used to. Her expression is stone and her face is wan and pale, tired and too drawn. He didn’t ask her what became of Ramsay. It was not his kill, but hers.

Winterfell’s vast walls surround him because he fought for them, but Sansa won them. He sits in the vast hall because he fought, and Sansa won. She is more their father’s child than he could be, he knows that. He’s so fiercely proud of his sister, still ashamed he dismissed her so many times. They all here owe her their lives.

For a moment, a fond love so blinding grips him and he feels the burn of tears at the back of his throat. Bolton is dead, and Winterfell is theirs. Jon wants nothing more than to tuck himself into a dark nook and sleep for a thousand years, has half a mind to rise and do just that when the heavy sound of footfalls echoes through the Great Hall.

“Little one’s being readied for burying,” Tormund says, the growl of his voice shooting down Jon’s spine. “And the men for burning.”

He looks up as the Wildling sidles across the hall, taking it in with one cocked brow. Wordlessly, Jon offers out his cup, and the man takes it, sniffing once; his nose wrinkles but he drinks the wine anyway, and Jon rises from his father’s old chair. As soon as he does, his head spins and he braces a hand on the table, grunting faintly.

“Always hits harder when you get up,” Tormund says sagely, a little too late, and Jon huffs quietly. He’s so fucking tired, and he can’t believe either of them are even standing here.

The relief batters against his grief, his permeating fear; the ghosts around him are still so loud, and the mere thought of Tormund becoming one of them chokes him as soon as it seizes hold of him. Jon leans heavily against the table, ears ringing with his own heartbeats, and the tears burn along the seam of his eyes.

“Easy, little crow.”

A hand closes around his arm, and Jon leans into the warmth instinctively, his body aching for comfort. For a man so large, Tormund can move shockingly quick, quiet as a mouse when he needs to be. Jon lifts his gaze to meet those piercing blue eyes and his stomach flips, the stone in his throat growing twice its size.

And then Tormund is touching him, one huge, bare hand eclipsing his jaw. Jon shuts his eyes, reveling in the warmth of his calloused palm, and Tormund hums low in his chest. A conflict of emotions writhe and tangle in Jon’s chest, but he’s too damn exhausted to pull them apart. He leeches warmth and calls it human comfort – though he knows it’s not. No one else gets close like this. No one else gets to touch him like this.

“Thought we’d lost you to the bloodthirst, Jon Snow,” the Wildling admits, his thumb rasping over Jon’s split lip. It burns and stings, but he can’t seem to pull away as the moment swells, becomes something far more intimate than any moment they’ve shared in the quiet stillness after a battle. The touch is gentle, shockingly gentle for a man so brutal.

There’s a strange allure to the man that Jon can’t quite place. His aquiline face is often intense, changing only when he smiles, though every aspect of him is edged and sharp. He still has blood in his red hair, blood on his leathers, crusted over one ear and across a temple. A nasty gash splits one brow, still shiny; it’ll scar, Jon thinks idly.

“It never gets easier,” Jon murmurs. “Seeing – that.”

“No, little crow,” Tormund says, “but you get stronger.”

“I don’t want to see it again. I’m so tired of this, Tormund. I feel like I’ve been fighting for my life since I was just a boy. I need it to _stop_.”

The words come pouring forth, their way eased by the wine in his empty stomach, and Tormund’s expression grows softer than he’s ever seen. Concern creases his brow, his hand sliding back to curl around the nape of his neck, and the Wildling knocks their heads together gently and stays there. Jon shuts his eyes and digs his fingertips into the bulk of Tormund’s arm, if only to remind himself that he’s real, whole and hale and alive.

“Come on, little crow,” the Wildling urges quietly, “time for you to rest.”

His protests die on his tongue as Tormund steers him away from the table, leaving the pitcher of wine and the goblet behind. The castle blurs around him, exhaustion turning stone to oil, and how Tormund knows where to steer him, he isn’t sure. People speak on the way and the rumble of the giant man’s voice answers, but Jon doesn’t much pay it any mind. His head aches, his jaw hurts, and his body is beyond battered.

He can feel the pull and sting of bruises forming over his chest and sides. The scars from his murder burn and itch and he smells of piss and blood and death, of the endless horror he’d felt caught beneath the stampede of men. The memory of it lingers and Jon catches a breath in his throat, nausea boiling low in his gut.

The chambers Tormund steers him to aren’t his old ones, and they aren’t any he recognizes as his sibling’s, which brings a small amount of relief. The bed is plain, and the décor is simple; Tormund mutters a string of curses as he rips down a forgotten tapestry of the flayed man of house Bolton and tosses it in the burning hearth.

There’s a basin of hot water near the window, a platter of food and rations on the table. Jon passes the food, wanting nothing more than to rid himself of his reeking armor and the blood, the gore – he strips his bracers first and pulls at the belts of his black jerkin, cursing when his hold slips. Then, there’s a pair of hands on his sides and Jon stills, his heart both calming and kicking up all at once.

“Tell me to fuck off and I will.”

He’s too tired to lie, and the last thing he wants is to be alone with the ghosts. Jon shakes his head, tongue too heavy to speak, and Tormund begins to unlace the sides of his jerkin. When it’s loose against his chest he pulls it up and off along with the shirt beneath, and a hand lights over his throat, beckoning him to turn around. Jon almost puts his arms over his bare chest on reflex, but then there are calloused fingertips tracing the pattern of his bruises and he doesn’t.

“Should’ve tried to find you sooner,” Tormund mutters. “Look at you.”

“You did find me.”

The Wildling grunts quietly and starts to pull away, but Jon catches his wrist and stills him. He’s so beyond exhausted, too exhausted for any kind of anxiety to try and burrow through him; if Tormund wants to break from his hold, he has no doubt he will.

He doesn’t. Jon watches his gaze flicker to the scars on his chest, the marks of his death, and the wildling’s nose twitches.

“Tormund,” he says as firmly as he can, but it comes out rough. “You found me.”

“Aye,” the wildling says finally. “This time.”

He doesn’t know what this is – this sweltering, clouded thing between them. It began as an ember after Hardhome, after it all, when he’d found himself adrift and brought back to the ground only by the strength of Tormund’s hand on the back of his neck, piercing blue eyes cutting down to his core. A warm blue, as bright and brilliant as the southern seas, not the cold, lifeless glacier-blue of the undead.

Jon ran from it, the heat that gathered deep in his gut whenever he was the sole focus of the wildling’s intense stare. He’s never been good at this kind of thing, never been as charming as Robb was, not nearly as confident. But here, now, Jon thinks it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that he’s a bumbling fool who knows nothing at all, or that the only confidence he has is when he’s about to die.

It doesn’t matter, because this isn’t the gentle courtships of the highborn. There are no politics, no delicate alliances to maintain or expectations to be met only to fall apart. There is only Jon, who has half a soul left and is so tired, and only Tormund, who is wild and fierce and touches him with hands so gentle he nearly shatters with it. The wildling steps closer, smelling of blood and battle, and again presses his thumb to the split in his lip, brow furrowing.

“I’ve found you, little crow,” he murmurs, voice oddly tight, “and now what do I do with you?”

Jon is so tired. His legs burn, and his heart feels as if it still bleeds where it was struck through. And he’d do it again. He’d die again, just to make sure he was safe. The ghosts surrounding him close in, but he can’t hear them, can’t hear them at all, because Tormund is alive, and Jon’s heart still beats.

“If I asked you,” he starts, hoarse, “if I asked you to keep me, would you?”

The wildling inhales slow and deep, as if he’d been expecting it, and Jon doesn’t know what to do with that. He brushes bruised knuckles over the crest of his cheek, intense gaze flickering to his lips and back and Jon stays perfectly still as Tormund moves his hands to the belt keeping his leathers shut.

The coat is thick, bulky, but when it falls away Jon is reminded that the man beneath is just as thick and bulky, hard-won muscle roping over big bones. Scars litter his broad chest, dispersed through the coarse red hair that lies flat over him, all the way to his groin. Jon reaches out before he can stop himself to touch the starburst scar over the meat of his shoulder, and he knows there’s a matching one on his back, knows exactly where it came from. A fist closes around his heart.

“Do you remember what you said to me, the night Mance attacked Castle Black?”

Tormund growls low, stepping closer to crowd Jon towards the wooden tub as his hands work at the lacing of his breeches. He lets the wildling strip him and keeps his gaze on that scar when he finishes undressing as well, until Tormund gently grips his wrist and herds him into the water.

“You told me –“

“I know what I said, little crow.”

Jon swallows thickly. His bones feel like they’re woven out of silk when the wildling carefully turns him around, then maneuvers them both until they’re sat in the water, Jon between his knees as the wildling washes him with brisk but gentle hands. It’s intimate and comfortable, the silence broken only by the crackle of the fire; this is a first, but Jon feels as if they’ve done this a hundred times before.

“I’d kill anyone who hurt you, little crow.”

“Even then?”

“Even then.” When Tormund brushes his lips against a clean shoulder, Jon’s breath hitches again, tears burning along the back of his throat. “I might’ve hated you that night, Jon Snow, but you were still mine.”

His stomach flips and Jon glances over his shoulder. The wildling’s gaze is edged in steel to prove the truth in his words; to know he thought of him as his, even then – even when Jon was still grieving Ygritte, when he was in a lost tangle of duty and need, of vows and freedom… It burns through him, burns down to the marrow of his bones. Tormund is the last one he ever thought would bury himself beneath the surface of his heart, but he did. Jon has died and come back to life again; the idea of loving another man seems so trivial when he thinks of it now.

Tormund has loved him from the start, he thinks, and it chokes him. Jon pushes the heel of his palm to one eye, tears threatening to overwhelm him. He’s fought so long, so hard, and he doesn’t have the energy to fight his own heart – not anymore.

That level of devotion is one he doesn’t deserve, but he knows, knows that if Tormund hated him and still kept him, he will never dissuade him from it. Jon reaches up to sink his fingers into the thick tangle of his beard, discovers it's soft instead of coarse. He pulls until their noses knock and he can feel the heat of the wildling’s breath, count the freckles over his arching cheekbones. Fire startles his gut, surging from chest to navel, heart fluttering like a boy having his first kiss.

Tormund doesn’t move. His hands curl around Jon’s ribs, holding him like he’s the only thing keeping him together, and perhaps he is. Jon thinks of the far north and Hardhome. He thinks of the dead rising, of the Long Night still to come, of fire surging back through his body. He thinks, _you could be dead still, and never feel this._

“I want to keep you, little crow,” Tormund says lowly. “Will you let me?”

And Jon – Jon can’t _do this_ anymore.

 _Kill the boy,_ he thinks as he closes the scant space between them, _let the man be born._

It tastes of blood and steel, and Jon sends water sloshing over the rim of the basin when he turns, knees scraping over the rough bottom and aching ribs bumping into Tormund’s thighs. The wildling slides calloused hands over his skin as if to soothe it, growling low when Jon slides his tongue free and fierce past his lips.

The roar between his ears silences his ghosts, who wanted to take the wildling and keep him instead. Tormund is firm and strong beneath his hands, huge body framing his own; he surrounds Jon and around them is the keep that was never truly his home until this very moment. Because the truth of it, the truth of it is, Tormund is his home; the wildling, the real north, and all that comes with it.

His adrenaline is gone, leaving him weak and shaking, but his spine still sings with heat when Tormund stretches out his legs and pulls Jon over his thighs. The hard line of his cock presses against his ass and Jon hisses quiet through his teeth as the pressure at the base of his spine hits a peak.

“If you want this, I’ll give it to you,” the wildling says, low and dangerous, and Jon swallows hard when he tilts his chin up with one huge hand and noses over his bared throat. “If you want me to fuck you, I will. If you want me to suck you, I will. But you have to ask, and you have to mean it.”

He feels like a man possessed. Lust courses through him, heady and fierce, but there’s more to it than that – there’s something heavier to it, something brighter, something stronger. He’s never truly lusted without wanting _more;_ he’s never wanted to bed someone just to wake up alone, not like most of the men of the ‘Watch had. They talked about fucking like it was another kind of battle to be won, like the other person was something to conquer and spit on and abandon.

There’s no part of him that could imagine abandoning the man beneath him. They are bound by blood, by betrayal, by trust rebuilt and a devotion that terrifies and thrills him in equal turns. Jon slides his hands through Tormund’s hair and the wildling sucks a bruise on the side of his throat, marking him through the pain with the shape of his gentle teeth.

“Stay,” Jon breathes. “Just fucking stay and _touch me._ Please, Tormund.”

Tormund’s hand slides down his chest, stopping over the scar above his heart, and then sinks lower, and Jon chokes on a groan when he wraps a hand around him. He’s not going to last, not as long as he’d like; he almost says so, but then the wildling presses their cocks together and takes them both in hand, and any rational thought dribbles out the back of his skull.

“Tor,” he begs quietly, “oh, _fuck,_ please –“

“My little crow,” the wildling purrs, teeth to his jaw, “I want to make you _sing.”_

 Jon clutches at his thick neck, curls his hand into his hair. Heat sweeps through him, brings clean sweat to his brow and makes the water around them feel like a fever. Tormund peppers kisses over his throat, bites and soothes with his tongue, and Jon wants to do the same – he wants to, but those huge hands keep him perfectly in place, one around his cock and one at his neck. He groans and then Tormund bites just behind his ear and he keens, hips stuttering hard; he’s rewarded with a laugh and a kiss that tastes like honey.

“Good,” the wildling praises, “sing for me, little crow.”

All too soon, the coil in Jon’s belly snaps and he climaxes with another low, rolling cry that all but punches out of him, vision hedging with white as his muscles clench and clench. He drops his head down to the wildling’s shoulder, who finishes with a groan that makes him go hot all over again, one hand fisting in Jon’s hair so tight it burns.

Limp and exhausted, Jon sinks down into Tormund’s arms, thighs aching from the strain and awkward squat over the wildling’s. The water’s gone dark and cold, and after taking a deep breath, Jon slides back and meets those piercing eyes. They’re lined with tenderness and a hint of deep, possessive satisfaction that shoots right down to his gut, stirring the embers until they spark.

“You’ve got no right to be lookin’ at me like that,” Jon murmurs, tracing the swell of Tormund’s bottom lip with his thumb. The wildling surges forward then, and Jon absolutely does not yelp when he gathers him up and heaves him from the tub with ease, shedding water all over the stone.

“Like what, ‘like that’?”

 _Like I_ am _some kind of god,_ Jon thinks as he’s rubbed down by a linen. “You know how you look at me.”

“Aye, and I’ve got the only right to look at you like this,” Tormund says blithely, arching a brow as he pinches Jon’s hip. “I told you, little crow. You’re mine.”

Jon swats his hand away. “And what does that make you?”

Tormund rubs his own hair until it’s absolutely wild, and Jon can’t help the smile that pulls at his lips. He reaches up to smooth it back and is caught by a strong arm around the waist. The wildling pulls him to his barrel of a chest and Jon wants to feel that over and over, until it’s the only normal he knows.

“Yours. Thought that was clear. Been yours since the day you knelt down in Mance’s damned tent, you fool boy.”

It catches him so off-guard, stated so plainly. He was speaking the absolute truth when he said wildlings don’t play the games they do, hiding meanings behind lies and truths under those meanings that loop around back to lies.

Jon’s throat goes tight; again, he’s rendered speechless and nearly trips over his own feet as Tormund walks him backwards towards the bed. They land on their sides and Jon curls a hand around the wildling’s beard again to pull him close, emotion threatening to consume him. His eyes burn, tears finally springing forth, and Tormund nuzzles into his cheek, humming low and soothing deep in his chest.

“Why?” he manages, as Tormund draws the furs over them and gathers him in close. “Even through – all of it, everything –“

“You reeked of crow and bowed to a _wildling_ ,” Tormund says, arching a brow. “I liked you on your knees, Jon Snow. I’d like to see it again.”

Jon’s ears go hot and Tormund laughs, a robust sound that brings life to his veins. The ghosts have gone silent, and they’re both alive, and Jon doesn’t deserve this, but he’ll die again and again to keep it.

“Pretty thing,” the wildling murmurs, knocking his chin fondly. “I was yours because I wanted to be. Isn’t any more complicated than that.”

He’s silent for a moment. “Would you have done it? If you had to.”

“What? Killed you?”

Jon nods and the wildling growls quietly, leaning in to bump his nose to his brow. His hand presses to the scar over his heart, and there’s a thick, tense moment of silence as the wildling traces it with careful, almost reverent fingers. Jon catches his hand, presses it flat to the scar, as if he can erase it if only the wildling wills it away.

“No,” Tormund says finally, quiet and husky. “I don’t think I ever could’ve. I couldn’t ever have done… this. Not to you.” And then; “I wish I’d killed them. I wish I’d been there. They would not have anything left of them to burn.”

“You were there when I came back,” Jon says. “If you’d fought them when it happened – you would’ve died with me.”

“A good way to die.”

Jon shakes his head and cranes his neck to plead another kiss. Tormund slides a hand into his hair and smiles against his mouth before kissing him so slow and so deep his toes curl and his stomach launches up between his empty lungs.

For a man so brutal he can become almost incomprehensibly gentle, and Jon can already tell he’ll very much enjoy taking him apart in any way he can in the near future, but will put him back together again with the same hands gone soft.

A funny thought. A future. They have a future – he prays, prays to the gods, old and the new. He’d never thought he could ever have anything like this – not with Ygritte, not with anyone. The vows of the ‘Watch never bothered him, but now… Now, he’s free, and Tormund is safe south of the wall. They’ve retaken Winterfell – by some miracle – and while he knows the long night looms on the horizon, for now, they are safe, and they can live.

 _Let him live,_ Jon thinks tiredly as those thick arms slide around him and haul him in close, a tongue curling under his own, _let him live, let him live._

“Stop thinking,” Tormund murmurs, rolling him into the furs, “you think so damned loud. Aren’t you tired, boy?”

“Hardly a boy,” Jon answers wearily; the weight of the wildling over him is pleasantly entrapping, and he feels safer than he’s ever been beneath the bulk of Tormund’s muscle.

“Sleep, my little crow,” Tormund says against his temple. “I’m right here.”

His eyes are full of dust and there is still a war to come, the threat of the ‘walkers to the north, the endless wheel to the south, but for the moment all he knows is the warmth of this bed and the strength of the arms holding him close. Tormund settles to his side, pulling him close and curling around his back, his own to the door.

Safe, warm and kept, Jon closes his eyes, and for the first time in what feels like his entire life, sleeps without fearing the waking.

**Author's Note:**

> pls i am so in love w/ them


End file.
